After nine years, Ubud becomes a feature of the international writers circuit

ASHLEY HALL: The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival is underway this week in Bali, attracting 140 authors from across the globe to the mountains of the small Indonesian island.

The festival was started nine years ago by the Australian chef and writer Janet DeNeefe, who wanted to turn around the devastating impact the Bali bombings had on tourism.

Today, the festival attracts more than 2,000 literature enthusiasts, and has expanded to include programs for children in Bali and across the Indonesian archipelago.

Emma Masters prepared this report.

IRENE RITCHIE: So the kancil, with his clever wit and his clever brain, is going to…

EMMA MASTERS: Australian children's author Irene Ritchie is telling a traditional Indonesian tale to grade two children at a school in Bali's beachside area of Senur.

IRENE RITCHIE: He's going to think of an idea of how to stop that nasty ogre eating all their fish that they'd…

EMMA MASTERS: The story tells of a mouse deer, or kancil, a small nocturnal animal unique to the region, which outwits bigger animals in the forest.

IRENE RITCHIE: Wherever you go in Indonesia if you ask anyone about the kancil, everyone knows about him. So he's very famous.

EMMA MASTERS: Irene Ritchie has collaborated with Indonesian shadow puppeteer and English Professor Eddy Pursubaryanto to tell the story.

EDDY PURSUBARYANTO: When I was a child, my grandma, my grandpa they always told me about kancil stories. Then in 1980 I met an artist from Jogjakarta and he tried to revive the kancil stories, retelling the stories using puppets and that time he asked me to help him.

EMMA MASTERS: The pair has also published a children's book.

The puppet show is part of a children's program at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, a four-day event founded by Australian and long-time Ubud resident Janet DeNeefe.

JANET DENEEFE: The festival was born out of the first Bali bombing and I think at that point that's when I realised that I could make a difference to the community, I could perhaps help boost the community or do something. You know, it was my time to give back.

EMMA MASTERS: As Bali prepares to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the bombings next week, more than 140 writers from 30 countries have descended on the picturesque mountain village of Ubud.

The line-up includes figures such as East Timor's former president Jose Ramos Horta and journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger.

JANET DENEEFE: Ramos Horta and Pilger will be pretty fantastic, Nick Cave of course, but also some of the other names, the African women that are coming are so extremely interesting, Lemn Sissay, the poet from the UK, but there's all, you know, the Jeffrey Eugenides and of course Anna Funder and all those other wonderful authors and that's what the festival's all about. It's about the sort of authors that you'll never see together in one place.

EMMA MASTERS: Janet DeNeefe also hopes the children's and outreach programs will inspire a new generation of writers across Indonesia.

JANET DENEEFE: Post-festival, we go to six different cities around Indonesia so we take some of our authors and they engage with these literary communities like in Aceh and yes, Sulawesi and Ambon and Papua and all sorts of places.

(Sounds from within a classroom)

EMMA MASTERS: In another classroom, author Marcela Romero has been telling students traditional Mexican stories.

MARCELA ROMERO: Storytelling and stories are very good tools for education but when you go abroad and you actually can have the opportunity to go and see the children, it is amazing how it happens that you can actually help them realise that we are all human beings, we are all people that we have dreams and all that.

ASHELY HALL: The Mexican children's writer Marcelo Romero, ending that story from Emma Masters in Ubud.

From the Archives

Sri Lanka is now taking stock of the country's 26-year-long civil war, in which the UN estimates as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed. This report by the ABC's Alexander McLeod in 1983 looks at the origins of the conflict as it was just beginning.